Aviation Coming Eventually

Now that my spars were ready to recieve ribs, I had a little more work to do the ribs. Ribs 5 and 9 get 1/8" deep cutouts to make room for drag-wire brackets that go between the rib and the spar. These brackets hold the end of threaded rods called drag wires and anti-drag wires which form an x-brace pattern within the wing and take any loads that would rack the wing out-of-square.   I started trying to cut these slots with an x-acto saw but it took way too long, so I tried whittling it away with an x-acto knife. This took even longer. I finally realized that I had a scroll saw in the garage and made short work of the rest of the slots.  And then, just as I finished up the last slot I realized I'd accidentally grabbed rib 13 instead of 9. So, another mistake needed to be corrected. Rib 9 got the appropriate slot cut and was ready to go. Rib 13 had to have the mis-cut member replaces. This entailed removing the gussets in a similar process to removing the spar plates fro...

It took a while, but I'm finally at a place where I was able to pull those beautiful Sitka Spruce boards down from the wall and make some sawdust. I had two wide 13' boards, three narrower boards at 13', and a few 6' boards for the ailerons.  The two widest 13' boards became forward spars. The two nicest of the narrower boards became the rear spars. The last of them was ripped into two 3/4" square sticks to make the leading edge.  Both front and rear spars were then ripped down on the table saw just a little wider than final width with the required bevel on the top edge. The spars were then hand-planed to final size. A chop-saw squared up the root-end of the spar stock to have a square edge for laying out holes for hardware and the taper at the wingtip. Spar marked and ready for drilling. Hole for Wingtip bow already cut. All holes were drilled with my little bench top drill press. The spars laid across my new sawhorses which were adjusted to keep the s...